Oh, Oh, Oh!
Forgot the MOST IMPORTANT THING!
We (my wife and I) have 8 children and 14 grand children, FTR.
And anyone can ask about them! We love to talk about all of them.
Also FTR, my wife was an only child and I came from a family of 7 children.
And you can ask about them too. 
One doesn’t have to buy into Ehrlich’s arguments to concede that choosing the number of nonadopted kids you have is the most important environmental choice that you will make.*
Way more important than recycling newspapers, for example.
(For example, a kid born in the West has way more environmental impact than a kid born in the third world. Each US child born will eventually spew one million kilograms of atmospheric waste, 10 million kilograms of liquid wastes, blah blah.)
Still, this is not the sort of stuff you bring up with strangers on the street. Unless you are at a protest or something, I suppose.
No, you just reminded me of that Bill Cosby sketch. “Will you stop touching me? And you stop and you stop and you stop and you stop! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” All parents should be required to listen to Bill Cosby’s later routines. True stuff, I tell you. I did it to my sisters and now their children are doing it to them. 
That kid will also add much more to the wealth of the world than the kid born in the underdeveloped world.
The American worker is the most productive in the world, a factor that has to account for much of this pollution. Let’s not blindly characterize this as a complete waste.
Mr. M: That [US] kid will also add much more to the wealth of the world than the kid born in the underdeveloped world.
Depends how you define “wealth”, of course. Increased per-capita industrial production and consumption have their advantages, but as you note, they also involve increased pollution, not to mention resource use. It would be hard to say which society has the best per-capita “net global impact” (i.e., sustainable economic development plus improved quality of life plus all the other good stuff minus pollution minus nonrenewable resource consumption minus waste minus all the other bad stuff), but given the sheer scale of our per-capita consumption and pollution levels, I’m inclined to think it’s not the US.
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Catsix I tried to e-mail you but got a bounce. Could you e-mail me and I’ll reply ? Thanks
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Oh, and BeagleDave I did forget to mention that if you really feel like climbing a clock/watch tower please let me know since the closest one I can think of is at St. Ambrose a block away from my house.
Oh I already know where you live…
…and where TVeb lives…
…not that you have anything <twitch> to fear or anything <twitch>…I’m just saying <twitch …STOP THESE VOICES IN MY ONLY CHILD HEAD!!.> is all…
I agree completely, the world is far too overcrowded as it is. I hate to say this, but because so many people have the attitude that they are somehow entitiled to overpopulate the earth with their spawn I think its time to legally restrict it.
OK, I’ll bite Bongmaster, how are you going to 'legally restrict it"?
Speaking of, I finally got my pictures back from the get-together way back then. They’re matte finish, though, and won’t scan for crap, so I’ll get them glossied and we’ll all get to laugh at Dr Martix dancing, next week.[/hijack]
Eagerly awaiting **Bong[/]'s theory of what to do with children that weren’t licensed to be been born.
You could have:
Broiled baby
Fried baby
Boiled baby
BBQ baby
Stewed baby
Roasted baby
Breaded baby
Baby on a stick
Mashed baby
and many, many more.
I’m sure there’s plenty of Chinese people who could explain it to you.
So, Cessandra, I’m just being nosy, but how old is your husband?
Indy, he turned 30 this year.
Goo:
Is it not permitted in “somewhere near Pittsburgh” to get a sterilization? Seriously? Goodness gracious! Is it illegal, or are you just having trouble finding a doctor who will agree to it? I know several people who have never had children, never wanted to, and had the appropriate operation so that it would never become an issue.
On the OP, I think the response that someone else suggested, along the lines of “Why would you want to ask a personal question like that?” is a good stopper.
I’ve always told my daughters that if they wanted to have children that would be just great, but if they didn’t want to, that was fine, too.
It’s probably been said before, but I used to get REALLY irritated – and depressed – when my mother-in-law and her old biddy friends would ask me why I didn’t have children, and of course the reason was an infertility problem. I used to fantasize about rude, crude responses like “because your son can’t get it up…” (even though that wasn’t the problem!) but decided against it.
A
Oh, another thing: Somebody mentioned adoption. Unless things have really changed lately, it is difficult to arrange the kind of adoption most people want: a healthy newborn. Especially if you are white and want to adopt a child of your own appearance. I’ve heard of people spending absolutely HUGE sums to adopt a child from another country. If you are of the temperament to be able to do so, it is easier, I have been told, to adopt a “special needs” child, who is past early childhood and/or has a disability of some sort. I’ve also heard tales of white people who adopt a black child and then have to deal with all kinds of sh!t from people of both races for doing so.
It may be changing, but for a long time there was an informal ‘Rule of 120,’ meaning doctors would refuse to sterilize you unless your age X your number of children was at least 120.
They were just so afraid you would change your mind later and sue – ‘I wasn’t mature enough to know my own mind. You’re the doctor, you should have protected me from myself.’
Jeez, that’s ridiculous. I can, I suppose, see a doctor being reluctant if someone is, say, 19 years old and otherwise healthy, but that rule would prevent, say a person 30 years old with 2 children from deciding 2 was enough. Perhaps Planned Parenthood could help find a doctor who was amenable?
MLS, I think you have the wrong poster 
It’s Catsix that lives somewhere in Pittsburgh and is having difficulty getting sterilised.
I think the old “120 rule” is dead, SBS, though it is still difficult, almost impossible, in some areas of America to be voluntarily sterilised if you have no children. I don’t know what areas and I don’t know what the reasons are (though my opinion would be a fear of lawsuits and a paternalistic mindset) it’s just an impression I’ve picked up from a few predominately American message boards, that are tangentially concerned with this issue.